I’m Giving Up Antisemitism And Anti-Semitism For The New Year

Wilhelm Marr Father of antisemitism

From now on the only term I’m using is Jew hatred.

Happy New secular Year everyone! Here is one of my resolutions; I wonder if anyone will join me?

I’m giving up antisemitism and anti-semitism for the New Year. It’s all Jew hatred for me from here on.

And if anyone in my presence says “Judeophobia”, I won’t be responsible for the hospital bill.

Here is a very dry article explaining where the term “antisemitism” came from:

Marr’s conception of antisemitism focused on the supposed racial, as opposed to religious, characteristics of the Jews. His organization, the League of Antisemites, introduced the word “antisemite” into the political lexicon and established the first popular political movement based entirely on anti-Jewish beliefs.

Update: OJ asks in the comments, what is the problem with Judeophobia? Here is my answer:

If you have an irrational fear of a Jew or Jews then you are phobic and yes, Judeophobic. A phobia is introverted and internal. As soon as you act on that irrational fear you are, in my eyes, a “hater”. So, whilst many Jew haters are also Judeophobic, it’s not their Judeophobia that causes me a problem.

15 thoughts on “I’m Giving Up Antisemitism And Anti-Semitism For The New Year”

  1. Right there with you. I never touch the stuff. I’ve been going with either Jew-hatey (adj) or Jew-hatery (n) for a while, now, so I never get bogged down in Semitic Semantics. 8)

    1. If you have an irrational fear of a Jew or Jews then you are phobic and yes, Judeophobic. A phobia is introverted and internal. As soon as you act on that irrational fear you are, in my eyes, a “hater”. So, whilst many Jew haters are also Judeophobic, it’s not their Judeophobia that causes me a problem.

      1. Oops – I’ve been quoting a book called Judaeophobia, which is about the Greco-Roman predecessors of Christian (and eventually Muslim) anti-semitism. He came up with the term when he wrote “Judeophilia” into a German spelling checker, and it said that there was no such word, did he mean Judeophobia? From the mouths of spelling checkers…..

        Jew-bashing works nicely.

        (Do you know at one point in Europe “Christian” was used as a euphamisn for anti-semitic, to the point that one prominent European anti-semite thought the YMCA was an anti-semitic organization?)

  2. Now if the media would get their terminology(s) closer to the real thing, Brian, maybe the news would become more truthful. Kudos to you.

  3. It’s good because it defuses the “Arabs are Semites too” (often followed by the Khazar Hypothesis to add insult to injury) canard.

      1. “…whether or not the person in question harbors a hatred of Jews.”

        And that in itself is an issue.

        I can grant that not all anti-Zionists are motivated by Jew-hatred—sometimes they are, as they claim to be, equal-opportunity bashers of all nationalisms. But it doesn’t matter. I can’t know their motives, and I don’t care. It’s the end result I care about.

        End result of anti-Zionism, no matter what the motivation behind it, is the undermining of Jewish right of self-determination on its one and only piece of land in the world. So, to those “I’m not a Jew-hater, just an anti-Zionist” types I say: Perhaps this is so, but being an opponent of Jewish nationalism is a declaration of war on me as a Jew just as being an opponent of Hellenic nationalism (from the 1820s onward) would have given Greeks cause to fight you.

        I don’t care what brings someone to take sides in the Jewish–Arab Conflict. As far as I’m concerned, an “A pox on both houses” apathetic, neutral stance is perfectly fine. But as soon as they take sides against me, for whatever reason, it’s war (if only in the verbal sense).

        Most anti-Zionists are Jew-haters, and anti-Zionism is by its very nature Jew-hatred (just as anti-Hellenism would be Greek-hatred), but even when Jew-hatred is not the motive, anti-Zionism is illegitimate. Nobody has the right to oppose the Jewish nation’s entitlement to the Land of Israel.

      2. I know you’re a “zionist” Zionist Shark, but what exact species are you? I’ve read that off the east coast of Australia, black tip sharks are interbreeding with other shark species at an alarming rate, possibly due to climate change. I don’t want to generalize, but on the whole, I’d say there are more than enough sharks in the world already. Why do we need a whole boat-load of genetically-divesrse hybrid sharks that seem to breed like, well, rabbits?.

  4. It’s called Judenhass.
    We just finished “Maoz Zur” an incredibly moving song written at the lowest point in Jewish history – the Crusades of the 13th Century, in which the entire Jewish population of the world was less than a million, and only about 80,000 were left in Europe, after the Crusades slaughtered most of them on their way to the Holy Land (they never made it, by the way).
    The last verse, which was hidden for 500 years out of fear that its inclusion might lead to banning the entire song, is a tract against Christianity and the Crusades.

    Yes – Judenhass more than 700 years before Hitler.

    To quote one of the last lines in the fantastic Durch Holocaust movie, the Black Book …. It never ends!
    Yes …. Judenhass

    1. I’ve always thought that the last verse was added later. There are several versions, of course, of that verse; my rule is to assume the least politically correct one is the original.

      What I cannot figure out is how the FIRST verse made it past the censor –

      For the time when you will prepare a slaughter
      From the baying persecutor…

  5. I always refer to anti-Jewish racism or to racism directed at Jews, which I believe to be the more accurate term. For better or for worse, and notwithstanding the fallacy of “races” as a concept, racism is the term that is now common currency.

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